


The Wit to Woo

by Siria



Category: Cupid (TV 1998)
Genre: Challenge: episode1x10, F/M, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-01
Updated: 2007-12-01
Packaged: 2017-10-03 12:03:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So," Alex says when she opens her front door, "Compromise, negotiation, compatibility..." He's leaning, casual and loose, against the door jamb, wearing that old brown sweater of his that she knows has been a favourite since college. His hair's the same mess it always is, and he's got a dog-eared copy of yesterday's Sun Times in one hand. Her column is circled in a broad loop of green ink.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wit to Woo

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Trin](http://trinityofone.livejournal.com) for betaing. Written for [Jenn](http://dogeared.livejournal.com) for the [episode1x10](http://community.livejournal.com/episode1x10/) challenge, for the prompt 'significant wooing.'

>   
>  _... the trouble is that modern women are still raised on fairy tales, and that we grow up expecting to find that life's just like a picture-book. It's a great fantasy, sure, but it's one we all have to let go if we ever want to find a fulfilling relationship. Life is not Cinderella and her Prince Charming. It's not once upon a time, and it's rarely happily ever after — even if you think you've got your fairy-tale ending, you'll find there will be no sequel without compatibility, negotiation, and the compromise that comes from shared goals. _   
> 

"So," Alex says when she opens her front door, "Compromise, negotiation, compatibility..." He's leaning, casual and loose, against the door jamb, wearing that old brown sweater of his that she knows has been a favourite since college. His hair's the same mess it always is, and he's got a dog-eared copy of yesterday's _Sun Times_ in one hand. Her column is circled in a broad loop of green ink.

"Alex," Claire sighs, exasperated. She doesn't have the time for this: she's running late for a session, trying her best to prepare for Ellen and Matthew. Three hours sleep won't be enough for their co-dependency issues, not given the late night, grumpy phone call from the Chicago PD about Trevor herding a flock of chickens down Clybourn in a desperately misguided attempt to pair up a headstrong stockbroker and a neurotic farmer.

She's so tired she can barely think straight, and she's tired enough that being around Alex right now is encouraging her recidivism in all the worst ways; the sense memory of how he tastes and smells and feels beneath her hands, what it was like to push up against the weight of him, the heat of him on her tongue. Claire's tired enough that she's letting herself miss him, and she's tired enough that she almost doesn't care that it would be _such_ a bad idea.

He's staring at her.

"Look, Alex," she starts again, trying for professionalism, grasping for the detachment that's always served her so well. "We've been through all of this. Compromise can only go so far, there are some things that just can't be negotiated, and I think you and I, well— Well, let's face it, it was just never going to work out. We're in two separate places right now, _literally_—"

"There's a position opening up in the Chicago bureau in a couple weeks," Alex says, voice even, "They offered it to me and I'm going to take it."

"—_and even if_ that wasn't true," Claire says, raising her voice just enough to carry her on, to carry her through telling him 'no' yet again, "it would involve you having to give up too much of yourself. It wouldn't be a compromise if hated me in the end." Her shoulders feel tense, the line of her back is stiff and aching, and she wishes she were strong enough to look away from him.

Alex arches an eyebrow and taps at her article with the tip of one finger. "So what you're telling me is no compromise is possible here? No negotiation, no setting of boundaries, no progression towards—"

"Yes," Claire says, cutting him off as she walks briskly down the steps. She's been through this conversation with him twice already, once when she went to visit him in New York, and once during a three hour long phone call. It's not getting any easier. "And like I said before, I think it's best if—"

"Maybe I should take a page out of Trevor's book."

"I beg your pardon?" The surprise of Alex voluntarily bringing up the subject of Trevor is enough to stop her progress, and when she turns around, he's standing there on her stoop, hands in his pockets, newspaper thrust under one arm, as casual as if he still belongs there.

"How do you feel about courtship?" he says. "Wooing." The bright edge to his smile promises nothing but mischief; Claire grits her teeth.

>   
>  _... which is why often, at the beginning of relationships, the participants do recognise that they need to ask the big questions. But what we as a culture don't seem to realise is that there are questions we have to keep asking over the course of a relationship; whether it's been six months or six years, the whens and the wheres and the whys are still vital things to know if you want to ensure that things stay healthy. If you can't answer your partner's questions honestly, then it's time to start asking yourself: what am I doing here?_   
> 

"I hear questions are important, so here's the big one: apple fritter or raspberry jelly doughnut?" Alex waves a paper bag full of pastries under her nose. They're fresh from the little local bakery around the corner, still warm, and Claire's belly grumbles at the sight of them.

"Where did you come from?" she says, squinting up at him. It's early on a Sunday morning, and Claire's bundled up in sweats, her hair piled up under an old baseball cap, her ugliest pair of glasses perched on her nose. She's on her way to the nearest grocery store to stock up on essentials—coffee, chocolate, doughnuts, more coffee—that she needs to get her brain to wake up before she starts in on the editing of her next book.

"Is this a purely biological question, or can I bring in philosophy, too?" He reaches into the paper sack and pulls out a doughnut, biting into it, licking at the jam and sugar that smear along his lower lip.

Claire quickens her steps. "It's not even nine in the morning, Alex. You're not expecting me to believe that you just _happened_ to be in the neighbourhood right now with my favourite pastries, are you?"

"Kinda?" Alex chances, looking at her from underneath his bangs, head tilted to one side.

"And why exactly would I do that?" Claire says, setting her jaw, setting herself against feeling. Every time she sees him, he's trying to draw her back out, coax her heart wide-open again, and Claire's not sure if she can do that, not any more.

"'Cause I'm adorable?"

"Alex." Claire stops dead and closes her eyes, hands clenched into fists against the need to touch; and that, right there, that's how she knows she's lost it, because she's making a spectacle of herself in the middle of the street on a hazy spring morning, wearing clothing that she should have thrown out ten years ago and standing next to a man she should have been over ten months ago.

"Hey," he says softly, "Claire, it's okay, I don't want—"

When she opens her eyes again, he's gone; she's standing alone on the sunlit sidewalk, fingers curled around the warmth of the paper bag that he'd gently pressed into her hands before he walked away. She tightens her grip.

>   
>  _... which is why actions speak just as loudly as words. Not being able to say what you think and what you feel is problematic, yes, but not being able to show those thoughts and those feelings through your actions is equally so. I'm not necessarily talking about grand romantic gestures: nice as spontaneous gifts of flowers or daily phone calls or drinks at the Hancock are, the everyday and the ordinary are far more important._   
> 

Claire hasn't dialled Alex's cell phone in a while, but she still knows the number by heart. She taps the fingers of her free hand against the wall while she waits for him to answer, secretly a little surprised that it takes him three whole rings to pick up.

"Alex?" she says, voice clipped.

"Claire?" he drawls. He sounds a little sleepy, actually, and she wonders if she woke him up. Happy Hour at Taggarty's had turned into Happy Evening, like it nearly always did when Trevor was behind the bar and there was a handy crate of tequila; Claire'd been forced to spend a couple of hours talking down a hysterical Sabine after Trevor's latest scheme had back-fired spectacularly, and it had been well after midnight before she'd pulled up in front of her house.

"You wouldn't happen to know anything about why my living room looks like the inside of a florist's, would you?" It looks like more than that, really. It's like an explosion in Eden, a riot of primeval greenery and colour: orange trees in tubs and great tangles of sweet-blooming lilies, gardenias and orchids and roses, sitting on her coffee table and on the floor and trained up over the back of her couch and twined around the bannisters. She's standing in the doorway, stock-still and staring.

"Got y'some flowers," Alex mumbles, sounding the way he always does when he's got his face half-pressed into the pillow, sleepy and open. "Spontaneous."

"Alex..." Claire's voice trails off, because she can muster indignation in the face of doughnuts, but there's nothing she has which can stand against so much time spent, so much effort and planning, and god, this must have cost him _thousands_...

"Love you," he murmurs, voice rough and confidential in her ear, "Talk t'you tomorrow." He hangs up without waiting for her to reply, and it's just as well, because Claire can't speak around the sudden lump in her throat, the heavy scent of thousands and thousands of flowers winding about her, the ache of missing him even though he's always been right there.

>   
>  _... common interests are always one of the most important things you can find out about a prospective partner. I'm not talking about religious beliefs or political orientation, as important as those can be, but rather hobbies, pursuits, pastimes. There's little point in an avid hockey player investing much time in someone who detests the sport, or a classical music purist trying to reconcile themselves to someone who only likes hardcore dance..._   
> 

Three nights later, Claire hears music drifting up from the street. Not unusual in Chicago, but the sound is close enough to make her look up from her book; the melody's unusual enough to make her take off her glasses and peer out of the window.

Alex is sitting on the steps of her building, CD player on his lap. "Before you say anything," he calls up when he catches sight of her, "_Don't_ say anything, just listen. This is... this is what you are to me, okay? Okay."

So Claire doesn't say anything; she leans out of her window and listens quietly while Lady Day sings about all the crazy things that would keep her in loved and Alex looks up at her. When the song comes to an end, the last notes fading away into the crisp night air, he turns off the player and stands up to leave.

"Alex?" Claire calls out impulsively when he reaches the bottom step.

"Yeah?" He turns to look back up at her.

"Thank you," she says softly, and closes the window. It's hard to tell in the dark and from this distance, she thinks, as she walks back to her chair, but she's pretty sure he was smiling.

>   
>  _... and then there's the kind of love that makes us want to laugh in public, tell the world, emote grandly and spontaneously. Is that ultimately a good thing, thrilling as it might feel at first? I feel it's the little things that count for more, when it comes down to it; the things that tell you if this is going to last. Because deep down, I think we all want it to last._   
> 

 

Claire's a little more careful with what she writes in her column after that night. She knows he's reading it, and she doesn't want him to read too much into it; so she sits up late the night before it's due, writing and re-writing it so that she can take as much of the personal out of it as she possibly can without reducing it to something rote and by the numbers.

But it seems as if he finds something of her in every word she writes anyway: she finds a single red rose waiting on her stoop each morning for a week; batches of home-made pasta and salads and fresh bread that are couriered to her, timed somehow to arrive at the exact time each evening when she's beginning to feel hungry; a battered copy of Neruda's love poems in her desk, more bookmarks than pages, and a scrawled 'I love you' on the inside front cover.

She finds herself unaccountably touched by each new discovery, biting her lip and caught off guard at each attempt Alex makes to turn what he could once barely say into something tangible, something his hands could shape and touch. Meals he's cooked for her, love letters scrawled in the margins of love poems, the scent of roses.

This isn't wooing or courtship, she realises, walking along the lakefront late one afternoon; it's no more and no less than love, simple and as absolute as it can be, and he's offering it to her. There's a depth to it she never realised it had before he left for New York; maybe it hadn't been there yet. But he loves her, and she loves him, and the force of it is enough to make her gasp a little, eyes watering, and she wraps her arms around herself and smiles helplessly, the sunlight slanting down around her and the wind ruffling her hair.

>   
>  _... I've been informed lately, by someone who claims to have a very in-depth knowledge of the subject, that I don't know what love is. That despite everything I've written over the years, all the research and the study I've undertaken, all the people I've spoken to, my own past relationships, both good and bad, it was an emotion I'd never experienced. Maybe he was right; each relationship is by definition a personal thing, after all, deeply subjective, and I know that I've thought I was in love in the past, only for hindsight to make me question that. Maybe this expert friend of mine knows something about me I don't: some gap, some absence. But I do know this much: that each time before this that I loved someone, it felt like something true; this time, I love someone, and it feels like truth._   
> 

The doorman remembers her, and waves her through with a smile and a wink despite the early hour. The building is quiet and still, a Thursday morning hush in the hallways. Most sensible people are still in bed, she supposes; but then, that's probably a category she left behind a while back.

The newspapers have already been brought up, Alex's copy of the _Sun Times_ lying against his front door; he still has it delivered early each morning, preferring to thumb through real paper and ink rather than scroll through websites. She slips the elastic band from around the newspaper and flips hurriedly to her column; she circles it in thick, green Sharpie ink before replacing it as it was.

Though rarely coherent in the morning, Alex is an early riser, and Claire doesn't want to get caught before he's had a chance to read it; she pads quietly back down the hall, past the elevator, and positions herself just around the corner. If he looks up, he'll be able to see her; but she doesn't think it's likely, given his observational skills before his first two cups of coffee. She feels like she's holding her breath for five long minutes, standing there awkward and embarrassed and hopeful, until Alex's door creaks open. He shuffles out wearing nothing but a pair of low slung pyjama pants and some truly embarrassing bed-head, scrubbing at his eyes with the back of one hand like an over-grown kid.

He collects the paper and goes inside; Claire goes back to waiting outside his door. She parses out his morning routine in her head: walk back through the living room, drop the paper on the kitchen table, yawn and pour his first cup of coffee, make two slices of whole-wheat toast, scatter crumbs all over the pages as he reads, and...

And the door flies open, and Alex is right there, eyes wide and cheeks flushed. "Claire?" he says; the disbelief in his voice makes her gut twist. He's got the newspaper crumpled up in one hand, green ink and newsprint balled up in one big fist. "I thought you'd never..."

"Hi?" she offers, a little sheepish when she hears just how lame she sounds, "I've been doing some, uh, some thinking, and reconsidering some of my life g—"

Claire had a whole little speech prepared in her head since the moment when she'd handed in the final draft of her article yesterday. A litany of reasons to run through: to tell Alex all the logical, rational explanations she'd thought of, to tell him why she'd changed her mind because she couldn't change her heart.

But Alex always had a way of stealing her words, of taking all the ways she's learned to define and defend herself over the years and making something new out of them, and now is no different. Claire's ready to talk her way back to this, but Alex stops off her words with some voiceless sounds of his own, wraps his arms around her and kisses her until it's hard to breath for wanting him, for having him—warm mouth and the early morning scratch of stubble and the way she can feel his rib-cage shudder and tremble with every inhale.

"I didn't..." she murmurs when he finally draws back just enough to breathe, teeth nipping sharply at her jaw, the fingers of one big hand stroking softly over the staccato pulse in her neck.

"Hey," he says, and his voice is achingly gentle, "it's okay, I know, me too. Me, too."

Claire leans up to kiss him at that—hands stroking down the smooth warmth of Alex's sides until they curl into the waistband of his pyjamas, her thumbs teasing at the delicate skin there—relearning the enthusiasm, the quiet intensity with which Alex kisses, the soft sounds he makes. She leads him inside, leads him back to his bed with its rumpled sheets, lets there be a quiet time where they can discover each other's bodies once more with all the joy of this strange, new permission.

"Hey," he says afterwards, eyes crinkling up when he smiles, his mouth gentling her down with slow kisses, "Does this mean we're done with the courting? 'Cause fun and all as the Trevor Hale school of romance can be, I don't think it's going to be a full time thing for me."

"No," Claire agrees, stretching languorously beneath him and smirking at the way that makes him moan, "No, I think we can find another full time use for you."


End file.
